UTS selects CIO

Ashurst's head of IT, Christine Burns, has been chosen for the re-created role

The University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) has found a CIO following a five-month search.

Christine Burns, the current head of IT at Ashurst law firm (formerly known as Blake Dawson) has been appointed the university’s new CIO to oversee 200 IT staff, and will report to UTS deputy vice-chancellor (corporate services), Anne Dwyer, who held the role about seven years ago when it was then known as just head of IT.

In addition, she will be responsible for developing an information technology strategy for UTS to manage the exponential growth of “intensive nature of technology and data at the university”.

Burns, who was one of six short-listed candidates, will start in the newly created role mid-June this year.

Dwyer told CIO Australia that Burns was chosen for her experience, approach and enthusiasm to work in the higher education sector, particularly with UTS.

“I think that she already has a strong engagement with the very exciting and challenging strategic agenda that we have set for ourselves at UTS,” she said.

“Christine has the capability to engage well with our teaching and learning and research leaders, and to develop new models of support and sourcing strategies for this shifting environment together with our current IT management team.”

The university re-created the role due to the “explosion” of ICT projects at UTS, Dwyer said in March 2012, and is part of a $1 billion upgrade to the university over five or six years which began in 2009.

UTS is currently “dabbling” in Cloud computing, revamping its current Web presence and plans for its new wireless strategy are underway.

“The new CIO will also be involved in a major overhaul of how we go about our logistics and timetabling,” Dwyer said.

“They really need to operate on a high scale as the team is already working on these things all the time but it’s a big step up in terms of blowing out the e-research and the massive data management we need to do.

Follow Diana Nguyen on Twitter: @diananguyen9

Follow CIO Australia on Twitter: @CIO_Australia

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